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    Parker Owens
  • Parker Owens
  • Author
  • 08/07/2018
  • 314 Words
  • 1,428 Views
  • 8 Comments
Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 

Disasters, Delights and Other Detours - 27. Haibun at Concord

As is invariably true, any and all errors are my own responsibility.

I traveled to Boston for a large family wedding. The morning before the ceremony, I had time to kill, and decided to escape the urban summer heat and go to Concord, home of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau. There, too, are historic sites, where British redcoats faced a ragged militia in a running skirmish which ignited the American Revolution.

I found directions to Orchard House, home of Louisa May Alcott, a writer of considerable following. My great aunt, who owned a bookstore in the Great Depression, could quote her.

 

My car fit

in the last parking place

where you played and harvested apples;

tourists swarm, imagining you imagining,

wondering how you wrote your stories

without internet or

coffee shop.

 

I drove past Walden Pond, but found the parking areas closed. Weekend visitors were already flocking to the Massachusetts state park now occupying the pond where Thoreau spent days pondering the nature of mankind and one’s relationship to the community.

 

I pondered,

what you would make of them,

the summer crowds flocking to your pond,

where once Nature caressed you in her green retreat;

they now blare wireless banality

and strew wood and water

with litter.

 

There was plenty of parking at the Old North Bridge, where British soldiers fired upon advancing Minutemen. The Emerson family could watch it all from the windows of their home not two hundred yards away. Later, it was possible to walk a portion of the Battle Road, the long road back from Concord to Boston, made all the worse for the British soldiers by the incessant flanking attacks from the irregular American militias.

 

Spandex clad,

middle aged, overweight

suburbanites jog and pedal past,

heedless of the battle and the lives lost here;

the Shot Heard ‘Round the World is silenced

by cell phone chatter and

bikes passing.

If you have a comment, complaint or reminiscence, please leave one. I appreciate them all.
Copyright © 2017 Parker Owens; All Rights Reserved.
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Poetry posted in this category are works of fiction. Names, places, characters, events, and incidents are created by the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons (living or dead), organizations, companies, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.
Note: While authors are asked to place warnings on their stories for some moderated content, everyone has different thresholds, and it is your responsibility as a reader to avoid stories or stop reading if something bothers you. 
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Chapter Comments

mayday

I am not sure, but somehow your tone has changed. There is hardly any playfulness there.

You seem to feel more with the past than the present, greatly distanced from the latter. As if you were standing outside watching people today.

The past is all in your feelings, your head and heart.

On a visit to a concentration camp I overheard a tourist couple complain about the coffee shop being too far away, they obviously expected to enjoy refreshments on the site... your poems reminded me of my feelings then.

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Parker Owens
1 hour ago, mayday said:

I am not sure, but somehow your tone has changed. There is hardly any playfulness there.

You seem to feel more with the past than the present, greatly distanced from the latter. As if you were standing outside watching people today.

The past is all in your feelings, your head and heart.

On a visit to a concentration camp I overheard a tourist couple complain about the coffee shop being too far away, they obviously expected to enjoy refreshments on the site... your poems reminded me of my feelings then.

 

You have it exactly. My head - and perhaps my heart, too - was definitely with the ghosts of those who made Concord’s name, and not its current occupants. Thank you for visiting with me; and the wedding which followed was quite lovely. 

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Parker Owens
1 hour ago, dughlas said:

You stepped into the between times ... knowing, appreciating the significance of these places in the past yet seeing them as they are now and our modern obliviousness ...

 

I couldn’t help wondering about how we would seem in the eyes of the people we remember from that place. I particularly thought about Thoreau, and what he would have to say about us now. Thanks very much for reading this. 

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mayday
1 hour ago, Parker Owens said:

 

You have it exactly. My head - and perhaps my heart, too - was definitely with the ghosts of those who made Concord’s name, and not its current occupants. Thank you for visiting with me; and the wedding which followed was quite lovely. 

Great to hear that you enjoyed a lovely wedding!

I am pretty sure, by the way, that Thoreau would not approve of our attitudes towards nature and life...

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Parker Owens
2 hours ago, mayday said:

Great to hear that you enjoyed a lovely wedding!

I am pretty sure, by the way, that Thoreau would not approve of our attitudes towards nature and life...

 

Thoreau lived in a way utterly alien to most of the people I encountered that wedding weekend. We would be like visitors from a different galaxy to him, perhaps - yet all the more terrifying as we claim language and heritage in common. 

 

I danced at the wedding - what would Thoreau have thought about Sinatra? 

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Valkyrie
  • Site Administrator

You transported me to the past, then jarred me back into the present.  History leaves indelible markers on some places, and not everyone has the ability to see it.  We have to remember the past--the battles and tragedies along with the Alcotts and Thoreaus.  This was written with your usual deftness and and finesse.  Thank you for sharing it with us.  :hug:  

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Parker Owens
5 hours ago, Valkyrie said:

You transported me to the past, then jarred me back into the present.  History leaves indelible markers on some places, and not everyone has the ability to see it.  We have to remember the past--the battles and tragedies along with the Alcotts and Thoreaus.  This was written with your usual deftness and and finesse.  Thank you for sharing it with us.  :hug:  

 

You are very kind to read and comment on these somewhat melancholy reflections at Concord. It seemed that the whole point of remembering had been forgotten - or perhaps the memories were taken quite for granted. Emerson would wonder at us, surely. 

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